Here you will find a page with my science projects and publications
Amersfoort Cooperative University
Sometimes you walk through a city and feel that there is so much to do everywhere. That you can never be everywhere, that you are definitely missing out on things. Whether a city is vibrant or not can depend on many things, but what helps is the presence of inquisitive people, young people, creative people. You often find them at art academies or universities. Amersfoort doesn't have any of those. My colleagues and I have often said that Amersfoort needs a university. The response we get is: “Yes, but you can't just start a university”. So in 2011, we started the Amersfoort Cooperative University.
The idea was: if there are so many researchers who cannot find a job but would like to do research, if there are so many researchers with university jobs who are mainly concerned with applying for funding rather than doing research, if there are so many people with higher education who have time to study their environment, why not start a cooperative university? Just as farmers used to be able to set up a dairy factory together, couldn't we also run some laboratories together? We nailed a sign on the door of our workshop: Amersfoort University. Let's see who comes. And let's see who comes to say that this is not allowed.
At first, we didn't get exactly what we hoped for. It turned out that researchers, however frustrated they were with their jobs or lack thereof, couldn't easily get used to the idea of taking matters into their own hands. The independent scientists we wanted to meet stayed away. Instead, we got a different group: pseudo-scientists. A group working on a star coil that could charge a battery using zero-point energy (zero-point energy exists; it is the energy of a quantum mechanical system in its ground state, but zero-point energy cannot be harvested). The group issued the following warning: "The moment you start using sacred geometry in this way, you create a vortex that opens a direct portal to higher vibration levels. Various forms of energy can travel through this gateway. To ensure that you attract the right, loving form of energy, it is essential to create the system with the right intention. A very good tool is to place a piece of paper under the star and draw a heart on it." (niburu.co)
This group felt that conventional universities did not take them seriously. We offered them the opportunity to heat our workshop with their star coil at our winter opening event, but we never heard from them again.
The Amersfoort Cooperative University has since become a place where academic and amateur scientists work together and separately on serious scientific research. This has already resulted in many projects and collaborations with governments, knowledge institutes and passionate researchers. Research is being conducted into edible biomass from duckweed, the effects of climate change at a very local level, new forms of democracy, the functioning of breeding grounds and much more.
Ecsa
Since 2024 I am the Dutch ambassador for Citizen Science at the European Citizen Science Association. I represent Dutch citizen scientists and focus on the interests of grassroots initiatives and on the use of ethical open tools and free information.
Meet je Stad
Meet je stad is a citizen science project that enables anybody who wants to join to do science from the beginning to the end. The community mainly investigates their local surroundings by measuring with home made sensors, doing their own data analysis and statistics, and publications. We started it in Amersfoort but now has branches in Tilburg, Enschede, Utrecht, Bergen (Norway), Ethiopia and Sudan. And probably many other places that I do not know of myself.
More about the project and on how to join: meetjestad.net.
Scientific publications (not nearly complete):